It's Not Some New Debate

The cover story for this month's issue of Christianity Today relates to the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. In "A World without the KJV," Mark Noll writes, "American history might have skipped several dark chapters if the KJV had not become the dominant Protestant translation. Many of the worst chapters concern slavery. The KJV regularly rendered the Greek word doulos as 'servant.' 'Servant' and the more accurate translation, 'slave,' were already differentiated in the 16th century and became even more so as time passed… These passages regularly trumped efforts to use biblical reasoning rather than straight biblical quotation….

"Women made similar complaints throughout the 19th century. What we would call feminist objections were of two kinds. Some objected to the whole character of biblical revelation, in whatever version. Many contributors to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible of 1895 made such complaints. Others were more concerned with issues of translating the words for "man" and "mankind," issues that still incite debate. In 1837, abolitionist and suffragist Sarah Grimké had these issues in mind when she professed her entire willingness to live by the Bible, but also her ardent desire for a new translation: ‘Almost every thing that has been written on this subject, has been the result of a misconception of the simple truths revealed in the Scriptures, in consequence of the false translation of many passages of Holy Writ …. King James's translators certainly were not inspired. I therefore claim the original as my standard, believing that to have been inspired."

Tonight I watched the three-hour PBS documentary, “Not for Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony” (1999). The film tells the story of these two friends who worked together decade after decade to obtain the vote for women, but who did not live to see their dream become reality. In fact, they died before my grandmother was born.

I watched the film by download from Netflix, which describes it saying, “Their fight for equality in a male-dominated society more than 100 years ago gets the exhaustive and respectful treatment it deserves in this film directed by gifted documentarian Ken Burns.”

As the article and film demonstrate, questions about biblical translation and interpretation arose long before second-wave feminism.